Guy de Maupassant wrote an awesome short story titled "Was it a Dream". While I was reading the story for a class, I was wondering what would happen in the story to warrant the title. What I thought would happen was nothing like what actually happened, but it gave me an idea for a story of my own. So I borrowed some stylistic elements from Maupassant to make my own short story, which you'll see below. I recommend you read Maupassant's too, so CLICK HERE for a link to his short story. Read below for my short story. Warning: I wrote this after a breakup, so yes, it's a bit sappy.
"I had loved him madly!
"How it is to be in love, so madly, madly in love with another. So completely enraptured by his beauty, so hypnotized by his grace. To feel your spirit intermingle with his. His so full of energy, life and love and yours so thirsty for new, for adventure, for life. Real life. True living. Where every turn is a pathway to unchartered land and every destination is a fresh experience. When you're with him, your soul shines, the light threatens to burst right out of your pores if you don’t smile soon. He says your smile could bring light to a black hole, but he doesn't know that that's only true when he's with you.
"When you're sitting in the movie theater, you catch him staring at the way the silver light from the screen illuminates your face in the darkness. When he's driving and you're singing every word to the radio, he thinks it's cute that you're off-tune as much as he is. Your laugh, my God, your laugh. He would do most anything to hear it. The fact that you're happy and excited and laughing is enough for him to drop to his knees and thank God for putting you on this earth, in this school, in that English class where you met sophomore year. He doesn't even mind that you made him wait while you were with someone else, he's just happy that you're his now, and he is yours and you're living together now.
"Together, you are bright. You are symphonic. You are a new soul ready to take on the world. When you walk around, you hold hands to signify the unity, even though you know it's unnecessary. You're never really apart. No amount of distance could extinguish the fire that you created, as long as there is oxygen in the air you will survive. You know it.
"But one day, the oxygen left. The fire died. Just like that. All that was left was a legacy of love once had. You grew old and withered, your younger, better half had to leave the other, dead. Now that he's gone, you feel tired, you feel sick. Your soul is only half of what it was and half can’t shine like the whole and no amount of polish will do.
"You do other things, great things, to get your mind off of this new version of reality and for a while, you feel better. You feel fine. Some days you feel good even, until you are alone with your thoughts.
"Alone.
"It's strange though, because, in the depths of your tired, sad soul, you know that everything is going to be okay. You just need to give it time. So you do.
"Time goes on and you find another soul who seems just as good. You're shiny again and happy always. This new lover brings half a soul to the relationship that fits well enough with yours, so you sing and dance again. You go on adventures and it seems that your old reality has been restored, with minor variations from the original. You and he live happily under the same roof for many, many years. Your two halves grow together, and even though they never fully click, the two halves carry both of you well into your later years, and one day, you leave him and your physical body withers away, dead.
"The oxygen leaves again. The fire goes out, again, this time out of the forced whole, leaving embers in the half of your soul that was born of the second love. Then you are left with half of the soul that was never just yours, the soul that was made from your first love, and you rise with that half. You rise into the atmosphere, invisible to the human eye. You look down and see that everyone, at their core, has a golden orange burning orb- a soul- and every soul intermingles with another. Some souls burn brighter than others because they found the one that makes them better than the original. They found a soul that fills the blank in 'The only thing that would make this moment better is if ________ were here.'
"And other souls look duller and less shiny because their soulmate has taken the journey that you are on right now. And even darker still are the souls that have pushed away their mate, the ones who have denied the love, the truth and opted for a life of solitude and anger.
"And then you see your second lover's soul, newly dull and lonely, skulk back into his body as a tired, dark cloud.
"You can't bear to look. You never wanted to hurt him. You would have never left him even though he wasn't the perfect fit. You curse God despite your destination and in an instant, your skin burns like fire. In desperation for relief, you look to the clouds.
"Reflected in the cumulus, you see yourself. Not your mortal self, but your core self: a soul on fire. You are a burning red orb emitting impossibly golden, bright light. You’ve never seen yourself like this before. You have no body. You have no mouth, no skin, no language no sound only thought, feelings and flashes of a life that you once led. Your soul has scars that, when looked at directly, transport you back in time to the moment when the wound was made.
"Just a flash of a memory and for an instant, all of the feelings from that bleeding moment trapped in the folds of a soul that couldn't quite heal, are so pure, so real, so painfully painfully real that you want to scream, but you have no means.
"The memory dissipates in the same instant that it surfaced and you can't remember what it was you were hurting about. You immediately feel lighter and you rise and look at yourself in the clouds, the whitest clouds you've ever seen. And with each burning, bleeding memory that sears through your mind, it purges you of a scar, leaving your soul blemish free and the once-white clouds now dark from absorbing your painful memories.
"You rise and rise in the blissfulness of lightweight and exit the minefield of the ever-cleansing nebula with a loud rattle that shakes the world you're soaring above and the remnants of your sorrows rain down from the clouds onto the lives below. You go up, up, up becoming whole again, no scars or divots or pieces missing from your being. You are you. You are a person you never met but always knew. The clouds have cleansed you of your body, your weak, mortal body that seemed so fit on Earth, that can’t compare to what you have now. The fire has cleansed you of your negative thoughts and insecurities, it has relieved you of all your possessions, leaving all that there is: euphoria. It's not a feeling or a thing that you own. Euphoria is a state of being, based on nothing, because it is everything. You can hardly remember your human life before this that now seems so insignificant. It was so nonessential, but essential because without it you would never have been able to get where you are right now.
"Around you there are no clouds, only darkness and light, and you keep rising, higher and higher yet. Until finally you come to a great nebula of blue, pink and yellow and colors that you have never been able to conceive before, against the dark night sky. It is electric and bright and explosive. It is the light emanating from the souls on Earth working collaboratively to brighten the heavens, making this final destiny the most magnificent, incomprehensible sight you've ever had the honor of witnessing.
"It is the final mirror of your purest self.
"But what’s that? Amongst your perfection, your shine, your majesty, is a last, lone scar. Do you dare look directly at it? You can see in the periphery that it’s big, deep, and still bleeding steadily. Definitely old, but a permanent hole. Maybe even God Himself couldn't heal that one. No, impossible.
"You remember the pain you endured looking at your other scars. This one surely was worse than the others. But you know to rise higher you must address the scar and relive the pain. You look at the beautiful eruption of colors in the heavens happening so close, the colors bursting, the exuberance reaching out to hold you. You want it, and you move toward it, but make no physical advancement. The colors only move further away. You're not worthy yet. Just one wound left, just look--but it's gonna hurt--but you have to look. Go.
"Your eyes meet bloody flesh. You're rushing toward the nebula so fast you fear you'll crash. Out of the darkness springs his face. The first face that you ever really knew. The green eyes that once held you with love now pierce your core like the razor sharp edge of a diamond. The pain, Oh! Scorned so tormented and scorned! The fire so bright. The burning, impossibly hot burning! Oh, the agony!
Is this hell?
"The fights--so insignificant. Why did you waste the time you had together like that? But you couldn't have known what was to come--what happened always was. No one could stop it.
"Most of the time you spent with your first love was spent happily. The burning dulls down to bearable as you remember the good times you had together. You are happy on the beach in a blanket with him watching the sunrise, you are happy even though you're losing the card game you're playing with his family, you are happy singing on the saucer swings at the park in the dark night. So happy, so full! You could live in this happiness forever.
"Then voices, 'How about we sit down? we need to talk.'
"It’s him...no… no… not again, not that voice. 'I have to go away for a while, but I love you…' Your voice is weary now, worn out from all the pain. You're begging the heavens to spare your life as you rush toward the beautiful colors.
"Please, not again… never again… don’t make me go through this again. Alone. All alone.
"My love, where did you go?
"Why did you leave?
"Don’t leave me. Not again… this time I won't survive. please. PLEASE!
"Happiness.
"HAPPINESS?
"Agony. Is this death? No, it's worse than death. Your heart, your heart, the place where it once was in the soul. You're being torn apart, each fold and scar stretched and broken and torn, then heat. Too hot! YOU'RE ON FIRE. His face, his sweet, sweet face. Where is my love? His soft lips. The feel of his tender caress. Why did you go? He never came back. Imagine. Just the kisses--the nebula is closer--his hands on your body in the darkness- reach for it. You will make it. The heavens are your blissful escape.
"You reach the edge of the cloud of stardust and sweet water cools your burning soul.
"You are good.
"It's done. Over. The pain is gone. The light is back. Now look, look at your reflection.
"Beautiful.
"It's you again, but brighter and more golden than you were before. You are perfect. You are ready. Go on. You enter the nebula and the first thing you feel is him, he's here.
"The energy surges, your soul soars to heights you never knew and there you are! Not you as you last knew, but you as you always were and have always wanted to be. You as a whole, unified into one, necessary being. There's no doubt of existence because you always have existed and always will.
"This is living. True living. It makes you wonder if your past life was even real. This, here, is raw, the realist state of existence one could ever know; that one would never know until experiencing. Where every moment is not only a new adventure, but the best adventure. Not looking to find anything, not thirsty for a thrill, just exploring, living, thriving, off of the high of eternal, never ending uphoria. Nothing existed before this, nothing will exist after. Forever is now, in this moment.
"You have a faint memory, it's just a flash and the slightest burn, a piece of your life before. There is no visible scar accompanying it, and the burn is quickly forgotten. The memory slips away quickly like the elusive wisps of smoke dissolving into the air after a candle is blown out at the end of the night. Did the memory even happen or was it a dream?”
